Days at the Office
by Astrid Goes For A Spin
Summary: Her job is to keep Walter in check, and Paige has a lot of work ahead of her.


**Okay, so I can't find the line that separates things on here. Is it gone?! **

**I know I've been kind of absent, but, like, life. I'll get back to everybody as soon as I can. **

**On an upbeat note...Walter O'Brien. (Sigh.) I haven't actively made time to watch TV at night since ****_The Suite Life._**** I love them all, but I'm ****_in_**** love with Walter. [It's a different kind of love than my normal fandom-love: Hiccup and Neville are way up there, but I love Walter in a much more normal, girlish way. I'm finally connecting to the normal fringes of fandom...]**

**It's such a strong show, too! No need for terrorists and lots of guns and death, no (bad) profanity or sexual scenes (as of yet). I'm holding out hope. **

**R&R. You know the drill, my friends.**

.

They were too different.

Paige wasn't really sure why she did this. Because she needed a better paycheck than a Greek diner could give her, because she wanted to afford a safe car (complete with airbags) for her child, because they all warned her she'd never connect with him and they wouldn't speak for ten years at a time. Not because she enjoyed standing up in Ferraris going 200 miles an hour, not because she liked vomiting from fear, not because she liked ziplining and ripping off casinos.

And definitely not because she liked keeping a man who was definitely too smart for his own good in check.

Working for Cabe and Walter is just about the most stressful thing she's ever done, including giving birth and confronting her husband about cheating with a blond with a Tahoe. And her job - her _job_ - is letting Walter know when he's being rude and insensitive and hurtful, when he's yelling at people who don't deserve it and being so arrogant (flaunting that higher-than-Einstein's IQ) she's literally embarrassed to know him.

At first, she thought the job was going to entail "translating" the world for _all_ of them. Paige might not be a genius, but she caught on quickly - it's just Walter who needs to be reminded he's human.

Paige admires Happy more than she can say. She's brave without even realizing it, resourceful, and she knows herself better than anyone Paige has ever met, and if people's feelings get bent along the way, she deals with it.

Toby's full of himself and gutsy, willing to risk everything, but he's also aggressive in his manner and knows everyone too well to actually understand what makes them tick, pushing and prodding until someone explodes.

Sylvester is fearful and phobic and actually kind, concerned not only about his own safety and cleanliness but about others' as well, and gives out compliments that Paige has a hard time accepting in their genuineness; he can't deceive.

But Walter...well, he tries. Unlike the others, he knows he's ridiculous and tries to be better - sometimes. He hired Paige for that express purpose. But he doesn't know how to be kind and polite, or care about anyone outside his _cyclone_.

She wanted to sink through the floor as he brought up, _again_, his extremely high IQ. She felt like denying she knew him as he confidently and impertinently informed the judge that she could not find a jury of his peers.

She's loyal to him, of course, because he rescued her from a life of two jobs and near-estrangement from her son. Because she is now a member of his cyclone. Because he defends her and protects her and there's trust, going both ways.

So it never occurred to her to let him stay in prison, it never occurred to her to allow anything to happen to him.

She still feels like slapping those self-satisfied smirks off his unshaven cleft chin, even though she knows she'll get a too-quick explanation of how violence doesn't mean anything or shows emotional instability or, of course, that she personifies the definition of insanity.

Somehow, though, she knows that, like Ralph and all the rest of the geniuses she's learning to love, if she gives that stupid, stubborn, and way too smart man a hug, it'll confuse and make him for uncomfortable than a blow to the face ever could.

She's got a lot of work to do.


End file.
